They both have five home runs and have wRC+ of 151 or better. These two veteran sluggers seem to be getting back to their old ways of power and patience leading to success offensively. For that reason, I am advocating either picking them up, holding onto them, or acquiring them in leagues that have excess UTIL spots or CI spots.
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There is something to be said for guys who seem rather bland and become undervalued because of their seemingly averageness when it comes to fantasy baseball. To me, Todd Frazier is one of those guys. In whiffing on Chase Headley, I was able to grab Frazier on the waiver wire a few weeks back and have enjoyed the performance he has given me thus far. From looking a bit more in depth at his numbers, it seems like he should sustain a better-than-expect level of performance.
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It is hard not to at least like a player with a 112 wRC+ and that is dual eligible at second and third base, but I am starting to fall less in love with Matt Carpenter as a fantasy player.
My reasoning is not based on his numbers shrinking down from where they were last year, I think the power will come back a bit at least in the form of more doubles and I think he’s going to score a bunch of runs and hit for a high average. My problem with Carpenter lies in the lack of homers and lack of steals he provides a fantasy roster.
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Over at Viva El Birdos, SBNation’s Cardinal’s blog, author Craig Edwards has a great post on Matt Adams and the shift. In the piece, he notes that Adams hits almost all of his home runs to right field or right center, showing that his best way to beat the shift has been to just bash one over the fence. This season, things have started off a bit differently.
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I had Jonathan Villar late last season in a league I needed some extra speed in (net stolen bases) and he gave me a solid 10 steals over the last third of the season. I had him in a dynasty league as well so I have been monitoring him for some while. The Astros have had a solid core of shortstops in their system with Villar then on the verge of major league play and Carlos Correa and Nolan Fontana further down the minors behind him. Villar got overshadowed due to Correa’s incredible upside, but he is now becoming a more common name among fantasy circles due to his impressive speed.
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A few weeks back I talked about how I wasn’t huge on Eric Hosmer this year, with one of the bigger reasons being Brandon Belt’s draft spot. To me, while he is a slightly poor man’s version, Belt provides much higher upside with much lower downside. I drafted him two leagues this season, one as a UTIL option behind Jose Abreu and one as the primary 1B with Matt Adams as my primary backup. While I have confidence in him this season, I do think it would be a bit aggressive to own only him as a first base option in a standard format.
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Sonny Gray is littered across the RotoGraphs bold prediction posts, so I felt obligated to break Gray down and elaborate on why I and most of the team feel so confident in Gray this season.
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He throws all four pitches, has solid velocity, a big solid frame, will begin the season in the White Sox rotation, and is a top 100 prospect. With all of that said, will Erik Johnson be worth a flier in fantasy formats this season?
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Do I love Ubaldo Jimenez as a pitcher? No. He is wild, he is inconsistent, and very difficult to predict on a year-by-year and start-by-start basis. However, he is looking very undervalued of late and should be a guy most people are targeting late in drafts.
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The way I am drafting this year, which isn’t much different than most years, is to wait a long while on pitching and stack my roster with mid rotation types along with some young guys with high upside. There is always debate on whether or not that strategy is appropriate, and this post is certainly not expected to start that debate. But one guy I have had on my mind was Ervin Santana. As someone who has added a sinker and regularly shows great command, Santana is a guy I was looking at pretty aggressively entering my drafts.
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